


I'll hold your pieces together

by Gwendelan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Crying Derek, Cuddling & Snuggling, Derek Needs a Hug, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 22:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9628301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwendelan/pseuds/Gwendelan
Summary: "He’s about to holler a dog joke about not rushing to the door to bring him his slippers when he registers the suitcase still standing neatly in the hallway leading to the bedrooms, and an uneasy feeling settles in his stomach.He rises to go investigate the alpha’s whereabouts, only to stop short at the sight of Derek’s right foot peeking around the back of the couch and the sound of barely muffled sobs."





	

"Derek, I brought pizza!" Stiles clamors as he pushes open the appartment’s sliding door.

He’s met with silence, which isn’t anything unusual, so he perilously juggles the pizza box, his bag of schoolbooks and his laptop case into the living room and dumps everything on the coffee table. He’s about to holler a dog joke about not rushing to the door to bring him his slippers when he registers the suitcase still standing neatly in the hallway leading to the bedrooms, and an uneasy feeling settles in his stomach.

He rises to go investigate the alpha’s whereabouts, only to stop short at the sight of Derek’s right foot peeking around the back of the couch and the sound of barely muffled sobs.

He stills. He’s never seen the alpha shed a single tear, except on rare and usually dreadful occasions like the day of Boyd’s death. Either something terrible happened – but someone would have called him already – or this is a long overdue emotional breakdown, and he guesses Derek would probably much rather keep his stoic and unshakable image going for as long as possible. Which means that Stiles showing up unannounced invades what was probably supposed to be a _very_ private moment.

On the other hand, the werewolf still hasn’t uttered a single word to make him leave, nor physically removed him from his appartment, like he’s been known to do in the past. They’ve been working towards a tentative friendship, though, so maybe this is the sign Stiles has been waiting for that Derek trusts him enough to show some vulnerability.

Slowly, he makes his way around the couch, coming to a halt when his gaze meets the hunched over silhouette of his alpha, sitting with his arms around his knees and the face of someone who’s been crying for a while but is trying to hide it.

Stiles’s heart squeezes painfully.

"Dude. What’s wrong?" He asks, dropping to a crouch.

"What are you doing here?" Is the gruff answer he gets.

"I had something to show you and Cora told me you were back, so I… thought I’d come by." He winces, expecting a more-or-less rude rebuttal. What he gets instead is a self-depreciating laugh and fresh tears rolling down Derek’s cheeks.

"Not such a good idea, now, huh?" Derek chokes out, rubbing the back of one hand over his face to get rid of the water still flowing freely.

"Hey, now. We’re friends, aren’t we? I wouldn’t judge you for this."

The sceptical look the werewolf throws his way only strengthens the queasiness in his stomach, and he finds himself once more wishing that Derek hadn’t been dealt such a shitty hand in life, and could trust that some people at least – the pack, _Stiles_ – would never voluntarily harm him.

It hurts him more than he could put in words to know that despite everything they endured, the years saving each other’s lives, Derek still thinks he has to fight every battle alone, to navigate emotional minefields on his own.

"Come on, now. You know me, Derek. You know I’m not so much of an asshole that I’d mock you for needing to cry. Do you really think so little of me?"

The alpha merely shrugs, but his entire posture loosens a bit, just enough that Stiles feels entitled to sit down as close as possible without actually touching him. 

"I mean, I’ll go if you’d really rather be alone. But if you need company, don’t push me away just because you think you shouldn’t break down in front of me, or whatever. You can’t be in control all the time, dude."

Derek just breathes for a while, and then gives a tense nod that has Stiles reaching an arm to wrap around his shoulders.

"So that’s a yes for company. You wanna tell me what’s wrong, or do you just need to let it out?" He asks, not really knowing what to expect.

Derek shrugs again. The human is prepared to resort to interrogation techniques to weasel the truth out of him, when the werewolf just lists sideways until he’s resting on his shoulder, one of his arms wrapping around Stiles’s back, the opposite hand gripping the front of his hoodie in a white knuckled grip, and starts shaking with silent sobs.

Stiles is momentarily bewildered, before instincts kick in and he squeezes the alpha to his chest, fingers burying in the downy strands of hair at his nape and raking over his scalp in what he hopes is a comforting gesture.

As far as he knows, Derek’s trip wasn’t any serious business, just a reckoning with a pack further north, seeing if they could form an alliance and find strength in numbers. Cora was the one to call him two hours ago to inform him they were back, so he knows for a fact that she’s perfectly fine. And that everything went well.

He has no idea what brought this on, but whatever is going on, he’s not letting go anytime soon.

"Shhhh, you’re okay." He mumbles when Derek lets out a whine. "I don’t know if something happened, but we’ll get you through this, okay? Whatever you need, we’re here for you, man. You just have to ask. Let it out, come on, you’ll feel better. I’m not going anywhere."

Derek folds himself in the human’s lap, long legs bending to fit against his chest, face nested in the crook of his neck, and Stiles is startled to realise how _small_ the alpha feels like this. They’re about the same height, but the width of Derek’s shoulders and the brute strength that exudes from his entire stature always made him seem like he’s towering over them all. Right now, though, he’s curling into as small a ball as possible, nestling against him as if he’s seeking shelter, and Stiles just grips him impossibly tighter, bending his own head to shield him from the world.

After a while, the sobs recede, the uncontrollable shaking abates, and Derek relaxes somehow into a slightly looser coil around his body. He doesn’t pull back, though, so Stiles keeps a firm hold on him.

"Feeling better?" He asks, soft, instead of voicing the thousand questions whirling through his mind. There will be time for that later.

"Yeah. Sorry about that." He lifts a hand to wipe his face and goes to withdraw from the embrace, but Stiles gathers him close once more.

"No need to be sorry." He says forcefully. "Anytime you need it, okay? That’s what friends are for. And maybe you don’t consider us friends, Derek, which would be a bummer because I really like you, but at the very least we’re pack, and this is what pack _does_ , okay, caring for each other. So don’t ever apologize for needing a bit of TLC."

He feels the werewolf tense for a second, and then it’s like a switch has been turned off. He sprawls across his lap and collapses back against his chest, letting out a long exhale like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. The human doesn’t know what part of his tirade did the trick, but he’s pretty proud of his ability to find the right words, given that he still has no idea what the _fuck_ is going on.

"Can we stay like that for a bit longer?" Derek mumbles, startling Stiles into a laugh.

"Yeah, no." He clenches his hands into the werewolf’s shirt before the alpha can bolt out the door. "If you want us to keep cuddling we’re going to have to move it somewhere else because the couch is digging into my back and I can’t feel my legs any more."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

It takes a bit of effort to untangle their limbs and climb to their feet, but once they’re both upright, Stiles makes sure Derek has no time to start brooding over the situation and instead grabs his hand to haul him to the bathroom.

"Here. Blow your nose, wash your face, do whatever you have to. If you’re not out in five minutes tops, I’m coming to get you, so don’t even start overthinking things. I’ll meet you in the bedroom."

Five minutes is ample time to void his bladder, wipe away the last tear tracks and rinse out his mouth. By the time Stiles comes back with a mug of what smells like hot lemon-honey tea, Derek’s already changed into a casual tee and a pair of sweatpants, and is leaning against his headboard. The human carefully deposits the tea on the bedside table, fixes him with a brief interrogative glance before shrugging and dropping his jeans and hoodie, and climbing into bed with him.

Derek expected it to be weird. It’s surprisingly not. Maybe it’s because they spent the last whatever-hour hugging, or because it’s _Stiles_ , and the human has no shame whatsoever and violates his personal space on a regular basis. Still, it feels strangely natural to scoot down the bed and roll on his side so the teen can curl around Derek’s back and wrap an arm around his waist.

"Good?" Stiles asks once they’ve both settled in position.

"Yeah." And it is. It’s everything he’s been needing for a long time, and he’s so grateful that Stiles was stubborn enough and _brave_ enough to give it to him. Like this, he doesn’t feel like he has to be the almighty alpha, the protector. Rather, he feels like he’s allowed to let his guard down for a while, let someone else keep the both of them _safe_.

"So. Wanna tell me what this was all about?" He speaks, chin resting on the ball of Derek’s shoulder.

He finds himself nodding.

"It was something Alpha Torres said. About how to build a pack, how to build trust among packmates, how to be a good alpha." He sighs. "It was pretty much everything I wasn’t. It wasn’t especially about me, just some random stuff that came up in the conversation. But I just realized that I was probably the worst person fitted for the job." He laughs humorlessly. "Not like I got a choice in the matter. But then it got me thinking about what Laura would have done. What Mom would have done." He sniffs quietly. "I – I tried to keep the façade until we were done negociating. Had a hard time not breaking down on the way back, but I didn’t want Cora to… Too many painful memories, you know? And I didn’t want to be the asshole talking about Laura when she was alone for years and didn’t even get the chance to -"

Derek chokes on his next words and Stiles curls around him a litte tighter, a little closer. He wishes there was something to ease that level of grief, but no words can relieve the pain of so many losses. So he holds on and prays that his warmth might be something, if not enough.

"Thank you." Derek says suddenly, sounding steadier already. Maybe he’s cried himself out for the night.

"You’re welcome, Derek." Stiles answers, finding his voice a bit strangled, too. "I know you won’t believe me, but you’re a good alpha. You may not have done things according to the book, and yeah, you’ve made mistakes. We all did. It’s not like there’s a manual on how to survive all the shit that’s been piling on us. But without you, we’d probably all be dead by now. You brought us together. You protected us. You lost so much and you kept fighting, because you care, about us, about everyone around you, even those who have hurt you. So yeah, you’re a good alpha. A good friend. Someone worth having around. So unless you’re kicking me out of the pack, I don’t think I’m going anywhere. Ever."

He feels Derek thrashing before him and lets him go, surprised when all the alpha does is turn around so he can crush Stiles to his chest.

"I’d _never_ kick you out of the pack." He growls. "You hear me?"

Startled, Stiles can only pat him on the back and lets out a giggling laugh. "Okay, sourwolf. You’ll regret this once you realize how annoying I can be, though."

Derek pulls back so he can catch his gaze.

"Never, Stiles. I need you to know that. Okay?" He swallows. "If anything, tonight is proof that I need you around. I couldn’t have done any of this without you, so if you think that I would just _let_ you go anywhere…"

What started as a smirk melts into a fond smile at the blush coloring Derek’s ears, but the alpha looks so earnest that Stiles doesn’t have the heart to ruin the moment with his usual sarcasm.

"It’s settled, then. You and I, together, till the wheels fall off." He vows, rewarded when Derek finally, finally laughs, too.

"Jeeze, you’re a dork. But yeah. Basically." He nuzzles under his jaw for a few minutes – more out of comfort than anything because, let’s face it, Stiles’s already _soaking_ in Derek’s scent – before sitting up and stretching leisurely.

"Now come on, I’m starving." His mouth contorts in a wolfish smile. "First one downstairs gets to eat all the pizza."

Stiles lets his own face glow with mirth.

"Oh, it’s _on_."

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot I just wrote in a couple hours. No beta, so please tell me if there are any mistakes.
> 
> Wanted to write smut, but it ended up being 2k+ of basic hurt/comfort and cuddling. Must be what I'm craving right now...
> 
> Enjoy! Concrit always welcome.


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